Nothing Would Be the Same | Nimic nu ar mai fi la fel

Nothing would be the same
even if you came back
your space in the bed has been taken
by the dog of solitude.

tall
and extremely difficult to defeat.

the four seasons are: spring, summer, autumn and winter.

In spring the grass grows,
the flowers bloom and the snow melts
we work in the garden.

In summer it’s warm, lots of sun,
we wear shorts
we take holidays.

In autumn the vegetables ripen,
the leaves fall, the wind blows and it rains
the school year begins.

In winter it’s cold,
we lose heat through our hands
it snows
children go sledding and Father Christmas comes.

Nothing would be the same
even if you came back

they have already learned
not to scream, not to talk over the grown-ups. To wait.
To keep quiet.

~

Nimic nu ar mai fi la fel
chiar dacă te-ai întoarce
golul din pat e acum ocupat
de câinele singurătății.

înalt
și extrem de greu de învins.

cele patru anotimpuri sunt: primăvara, vara, toamna și iarna.

Primăvara crește iarba, cresc
florile și se topește zăpada
lucrăm în grădină.

Vara afară este cald, mult soare,
ne îmbrăcăm în pantaloni scurți
avem vacanță.

Toamna se coc legumele și fructele,
cad frunze, bate vântul și plouă
începe școala.

Iarna e frig,
căldura se pierde prin mâini
ninge
copii se dau cu sania și vine Moș Crăciun.

Nimic nu ar mai fi la fel
chiar dacă te-ai întoarce

au învățat deja
să nu țipe, să nu vorbească peste adult. Să aștepte.
Să facă liniște.

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

Love | Dragostea

begins neither with a bang
nor with a sob

but with a shiver, a tiny hum
a stirred molecule
provoking storms inside the knees

wonderful things begin this way

at the tip of every finger
fragments of eyes,
hundreds of mirrors turned towards the world –

a kiss like a potent drink that shatters the spine

from my sky I see the whole bed

two beautiful invalids
silent under the blankets, in a motionless embrace.

they search for words
to fuse them together as one body

they smile. they breathe

their exhalations grow into great water plants entwining above the bed

~

nu începe cu un bang
şi nici cu un scâncet

ci înaintea lor o vibraţie, un zumzet mic
o moleculă trezită
stârnind furtuni în genunchi

nimic minunat nu poate începe altfel
 
la capătul fiecărui deget
fragmente de ochi,
zeci de oglinzi întoarse spre lume –

un sărut ca o băutură tare aruncă şira spinării în aer

din cerul meu se vede tot patul

doi invalizi frumoşi,
întinşi sub pături, tac împletiţi şi nemişcaţi.

ei caută cuvinte care
să îi sudeze aşa cum singur trupul i-a apropiat

zâmbesc. respiră

uriaşe plante de apă cresc din aerul expirat şi se înlănţuie deasupra patului

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

Love No | Dragoste Nu

I miss you in every place

your absence leaves me weary
I talk a lot
I cut my meals in half

I am a bomb
programmed to explode
in front of anyone who comes too close

in front of this man who warms the soles of my feet.

we could
watch the same ceiling together
consumed by heat and fatigue

we could walk around the house blindfolded all pleasure
all pain and after a few hours
a tremendous lack of imagination.

but hell is the inability to think
and the punishment for too little love is not death

but countless deaths.

~

mi-e dor de tine peste tot

obosesc repede când ești departe
vorbesc mult
și tai masa în două

sunt o bombă
programată să explodeze
în fața oricui se aproprie prea mult

în fața acestui bărbat care îmi încălzește tălpile.

am putea
privi același tavan împreună
topiți de căldură și de oboseală

am putea umbla prin casă legați la ochi numai plăcere
și numai durere și după nici câteva ore
o mare lipsă de imaginație.

dar iadul înseamnă să nu te mai poți gândi
și pedeapsa pentru prea puțină dragoste nu e moartea

ci nenumărate morți.

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

Fever | Febră

I have a fever.
and in this light
I see the hideous beauty of all the plants forced to grow
in darkness.

The thought of you makes my hands hurt all the way up to my shoulders
keeps them separate from my body
stops them from hugging me.

instead of shoulders
I have two holes and the rain falls through them.
every time I talk to you, there is lightning outside.

I can’t even call it a dream
now that I’ve seen it materialising, relentless and strident
like mannequins devouring themselves
in a closet.

in ominous silence
our exquisite love passes from night to night.
no regrets. no death,
just this miraculous fever
in which reason fails
for it is too exact an instrument

~

am febră.
şi în lumina asta
văd frumuseţea hidoasă a tuturor plantelor silite să crească
pe întuneric.

doar mă gîndesc la tine şi mă dor mîinile pînă la umeri
asta le îndepărtează de trup
împiedicîndu-le să mă îmbrăţişeze.

în locul umerilor
am două gropi în care plouă.
de cîte ori îţi vorbesc, afară fulgeră.  

nici nu pot să-i spun vis
după ce am văzut-o întrupându-se stăruitor şi scrîşnit
aidoma mestecatului pe care îl fac manechinele
devorîndu-se într-o debara.

în cea mai cumplită linişte
dragostea noastră perfectă trece din noapte în noapte.

nici regrete. nici moarte,
doar febra asta miraculoasă
în care raţiunea dă greş
pentru că e un instrument prea precis.

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

March 8 and March 7 and Forever | 8 Martie și 7 Martie și Mereu

Good evening,
I called so you can say happy birthday to me.
I let 24 hours pass
but I thought you might like to say happy birthday.

Because I am forced to speak
I remain quiet for too long
when I want to speak
everything goes against my nature
I want to filter messages
but I accept
I want to unlike
but I like
I want to unfollow
but I follow
the sound of incoming calls makes me want to scream.
I scream inside, then, politely:
Hello! Yes! How may I help you?
I scream inside
I scream.

When you say hello
I must reply
because that’s the way I am
and a stadium filled with people lacking b a s i c
kindness
who want to share
to explain
to complain
to announce
to inform
to notify me

because my thoughts
my skin and my synapses
have vanished
and it is never quiet
and never dark enough
never quiet enough
for me to process: you were very beautiful
I didn’t realise back then how beautiful you were.

because
the doorbell
and the knock on the door
make my stomach turn
and I answer with infinite kindness:

good evening, I am sorry to hear that you care.

the scream barely leaves

~

Bună seara,
am sunat să îmi spui la mulți ani.
Am lăsat să treacă 24 de ore
dar m-am gândit că ți-ar placea să îmi spui la mulți ani.

Pentru că vorbesc din obligație
tac îndelung
atunci când aș vrea să vorbesc
totul se întâmplă împotriva naturii mele
vreau să dau filter message
și dau accept
unlike
și dau like
vreau să dau unfollow
și dau follow
sunetul telefonului mă face să urlu.
urlu în interior apoi politicos:
Alo! Spuneți, vă rog! Cu ce vă pot ajuta?
urlu înăuntru
urlu.

Pentru că mă salutați
trebuie să răspund
pentru că sunt eu
și un stadion plin de oameni lipsiți de e l e m e n t a r ă
tandrețe
care vor să spună
să relateze
să se plângă
să anunțe
să informeze
să îmi aducă la cunoștință

pentru că gândurile mele
pielea și sinapsele 
s-au stins 
și nu e niciodată liniște
și niciodată destul întuneric
niciodată îndeajuns de liniște
să procesez: erai foarte frumoasă
eu nu îmi dădeam seama atunci cât de frumoasă erai.

pentru că
soneria
și ciocănitul la ușă
îmi întorc stomacul pe dos
cu infinită tandrețe răspund:

buna seara, îmi pare rău să aud că vă simțiți.

urletul iese un milimetru în afara gurii
și cade la pământ.

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

Last October

leaves and my frail-heeled shoes
your stubbed-out cigarettes on the ground
until yesterday love was a cricket astray
in the artesian well
and all the pink-lipped autumns…

over the doll’s house my young mother
laughs to my father who is revving his motor
she never understood the eclipse of life
the wine’s aroma, carried across the hills, inebriated present sorrows

from October we will circumscribe apathies
and we will sow the insanity of our nights together
on the narrow terrace of the apartment blocks
you and the robins’ song in the city gardens
will both anthropomorphise

seconds are carried on a leash like a communal dog
that nobody claims
and we attempt touch-ups with this autumn
over the anarchy of enamoured shadows
then we set alight the leaves
not squandered by the cyclone

autumns scatter, collapse, made
fresher than death’s cardboard shoes

~

frunze şi pantofii mei cu toc firav
ţigările tale stinse pe pământ
până mai ieri dragostea ca un greier rătăcit
în fântâna arteziană
şi toate toamnele cu rujul siclam…

dincolo de casa păpuşilor mama tânără
râde spre tatăl meu care îşi vâjâie motorul
nu a cunoscut eclipsa vieţii
venită de pe dealuri aroma vinului a îmbătat nefericiri prezente

din octombrie vom circumscrie letargii
şi vom semăna nebunia nopţilor în doi
pe terasa îngustă a blocurilor
tu şi larma sturzilor din grădinile oraşului
vă veţi ipostazia

clipele sunt purtate în lesă ca un câine comunitar
pe care nu îl revendică nimeni
iar noi tragem retuşuri cu toamna aceasta
peste anarhia umbrelor îndrăgostite
apoi dăm foc frunzişului
nerisipit de ciclon

toamne se răsfiră se pliază devin
mai noi decât pantofii de carton ai morţii

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

Renacimiento

it’s strange how love inhabited us / two asymmetrical bodies
one pushed to the abyss
the other stopped at traffic lights, waiting for the Absolute

the street’s echo penetrates the tips of my fingers all the way up to the left ventricle
a green-eyed boy wanders in the intersection with a lantern
pain pierces the bitumen like a bulldozer
Aristotle would have written a whole theory on this but what more is there to say about death?
the light does not hide behind darkness and breathes hard beside it
the last song played on the keys of the ribs has faded out
its pulse stopped this morning

now I see the light for the first time
only I can hold the earth in my arms

~

e ciudat cum dragostea trăia în noi /două trupuri asimetrice
unul împins în abis
celălalt așteptând absolutul la semafor

ecoul străzii penetrează vârfurile degetelor până-n ventriculul stâng
băiatul cu ochii verzi rătăcește în intersecție cu o lanternă
durerea străpunge bitumul ca un buldozer
Aristotel ar scrie o întreagă teorie despre asta dar ce mai poti spune despre moarte?
lumina nu se adăpostește după întuneric și respiră greu lângă el
ultimul cântec pe clapele coastelor s-a prescris
azi dimineață pulsul i s-a oprit

acum am văzut lumina pentru prima dată
doar eu pot cuprinde pământul într-o îmbrățisare

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

Resurrection | Resurecție

we were born for the sky
but on the Giza Plateau priests are looking for traces of life in the mastabas

I watch you shaving
and my gametes start playing the castanets
the ship of Keops is floating backwards
your wrinkles were tributaries of the Nile river
the tears receded into oases
your beard was a cypress forest
now I touch your cheek soft like tranquil water

the sand dunes ripple to the rhythm of my caresses
a sycamore weeps turquoise drops at dawn
the polished bronze mirror flies from my hand

a Hyksos man walks towards us, guided by a strange need for beauty
a gazelle leaps from the marble walls
straight into your irises the colour of thirst

she scales the white linen cloths coated in scented resin

she
she
my twin resorbed into a different life
that once again chose you

~

ne-am născut pentru cer
dar pe Platoul Gizeh preoții caută stropi de viață-n mastabas

te urmăresc bărbierindu-te
iar gameții încep să cânte la castaniete
corabia lui Keops merge înapoi
ridurile tale au fost afluenți ai Nilului
lacrimile s-au retras în oaze
barba ta era o pădure de chiparoşi
acum ating obrazul tău neted ca o apă liniştită

dunele de nisip îşi unduie coamele în ritmul mângâierilor
stropi turcoaz se preling la răsărit dintr-un sicomor
arunc oglinda de bronz lustruit

un hykso vine spre noi călăuzit de o stranie nevoie de frumos
din pereții de marmură sare o gazelă
direct în irişii tăi de culoarea setei

face salturi peste fâșiile albe impregnate cu rășini parfumate

ea
ea
geamăna mea resorbită într-o altă viață
care te-a ales tot pe tine

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

Alter Ego

black is the only colour left
on da Vinci’s palette
and La Gioconda’s tears are flowing from the wood

she
sometimes walked out of the picture frame and reclaimed it
they made love until the canvas tore
her smile was different each time
and he climbed out of the corner of her lips
into another painting

you told me by night she is a jealous woman
who hypnotised the artist on the frontier between love and hate

that line thickens
like fog on a battlefield
soldiers crouched in trenches, the womb of a mother
who does not want them
their groans enlace in an umbilical cord towards the sky
the only certainty is the milky air from which they drink anxiously
life is a painting where the colours all learn the same language

I confess
I wish I could suspend time
and watch the seconds emerge from its mouth like translucent rats

you watch
you watch
you watch
how death flows inside me like a white delicate sand

come!
for you I could be the enamelled bowl
from which da Vinci still sips his water

~

pe paleta lui da Vinci a mai rămas doar negrul
din care lacrimile Giocondei se scurg

ea
ieșea uneori din ramă și îl revendica
făceau dragoste până se sfâșia pânza
zâmbetul era mereu altul
și el urca din colțul buzelor ei
într-un alt tablou

îmi spuneai că noaptea e o femeie geloasă
hipnotiza pictorul la frontiera dintre iubire și ură

linia aceea se îngroașă
ca o ceață pe un câmp de război
soldații stau în tranșee în pântecul unei mame
care nu-i dorește
gemetele se împletesc spre cer într-un cordon ombilical
aerul lăptos e singura certitudine din care sug înfricoșați
viața e un tablou în care vopselurile învață aceeași limbă

recunosc
aș vrea să pot spânzura timpul
să-i văd secundele ieșind pe gură ca niște șobolani translucizi

privești
privești
privești
cum moartea intră în mine ca un nisip alb și fin

vino!
pentru tine aș putea fi vasul smălțuit
din care da Vinci încă bea apă

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

The Protectress | Păzitoarea

I don’t know when it started growing in the right side of my chest

lying on the bed, I feel its roar through my whole body
profoundly different from the dull sound of my left heart,

which, year after year, I had to touch
in silence,
almost in fear, to make sure
it was still beating.

I felt it first in the morning,
when the left heart moved imperceptibly
to the right

then the blood began to flow wildly,
digging new veins and arteries into the flesh.

I started bleeding at the lightest touch,
through my fingers, through the roots of my hair.
even if I ran my tongue over my teeth
or over my cracked lips,
the blood
would come spurting out.

then in the evening I heard the first bright beats of the right heart.
its roots reached from my ribcage to the claws of my hands.

that morning we wanted to reach the forest.
and because we could not reach the forest
we slammed shut the door, locked ourselves inside
and pretended to be wild animals.

it was dark
and from the garden a little song could be heard.

we only looked at each other, whimpering into each other’s mouths
and, invigorated,
we scurried to the rabbit burrows in the garden.
nobody knew us,
but we could hear the little song through the loosened
eyeholes of the hammock.

it was summer

and all the weeds were falling asleep
in the hammock.

you hadn’t had enough to eat and you were licking your lips

then I placed a black, warm rock
on the burdock leaf
and the little song stopped. we heard a clicking sound and
willow branches were falling noiselessly onto the lilies in the water

you were shivering
your hunger seemed to be fading and I looked at the heart.
no blood was flowing.
only large drops of rain.

now our house is turning to ice.

in the doorway we touch each other

like hands encountering a wounded animal in the dark.

your memories arrive slowly, stumbling
and slip freely through my skin

I move through the cold like an unbandaged burn victim

we stay inside

our brains shattered

outside, an enormous gate of flesh
through which we cannot pass

but it is the only way to catch up with ourselves
and we close the edges of this wound
in silence.

I watch unmoved as our hair grows
from shoulders to knees.

it is the way the two of us make love.

because the only light was the one
at the end of the cigarette,
I climbed slowly, step by step.

my bed is swinging three metres below
the moon

and here, finally,

I have everything inside me

the blood the right heart and the left
the air in the lungs enough for two
bodies
and the light, passing through new flesh to the back of the left breast
and from there it will emerge just once,
shattering my retina.

I have everything inside me
two ethereal human beings
only in an embrace
can they touch the ground.

but the edges of the wound stay raw
forever

my bed is swinging three metres below
the moon
and I wake suddenly looking at the sky.

I am
the protectress.

defending an almost spherical moon,

light obscuring light.

I talk to her a while we cry and we don’t know who puts whom
to sleep.

when we cry deeply a piece of the moon grows over
heart and sky,
black, falling into the void.

I am the protectress.
the blood invades my heart
howling
and cannot melt it.
bile and stomach surge into the mouth.
the liver is crushed between the teeth
like a cork in the neck of an old wine bottle.
I barely know when the lungs shriek briefly
and plunge into the earth, pulling both kidneys
after them.

with my broken diaphragm rolling around my mouth like a
piece of cloth
I flutter and flutter and
fluttering
I discard tiny bones
through my mouth.
four thigh bones are stuck
in my throat

and the translucent skin cracks

like a membrane stretched too far over this enormous heart
that forces my body
away from me.

~

nu ştiu când în partea dreaptă a pieptului a început să crească

întinsă pe pat, îi simt vuietul în tot corpul
mult diferit de zgomotul surd al inimii stângi,

pe care ani la rând a trebuit
să o ating în cea mai desăvârşită linişte,
aproape cu spaimă, pentru a mă asigura
că bate.

primele semne s-au arătat dimineaţă,
când inima stângă s-a deplasat abia simţit
spre dreapta

apoi sângele a început să curgă rătăcit,
săpând noi vene şi artere prin carne.

sângeram la cea mai mică atingere,
prin degete, prin rădăcina părului.
chiar şi atunci când îmi atingeam dinţii cu limba
sau o treceam peste buzele crăpate,
sângele ţâşnea
pulverizat.

apoi către seară am auzit limpede prima bătaie a inimii drepte.
rădăcinile ei încep în plex şi sfârşesc în gheare.

în dimineaţa aceea ne-am dorit mult să ajungem în pădure.
şi pentru că n-am ajuns în pădure
am trântit poarta, ne-am încuiat înăuntru
şi am început să facem ca animalele.

era întuneric
şi din grădină se auzea un cântecel.

doar ne-am privit, scâncind unul în gura celuilalt
şi odihniţi,
am luat-o la goană spre vizuinile iepurilor din grădină.
nu ne ştia nimeni,
dar noi auzeam cântecelul printre ochiurile
deşirate ale hamacului.

era vară

în el adormeau toate buruienile.

tu nu mâncaseşi destul şi te lingeai pe buze atunci

am aşezat pe frunza de brusture
o piatră neagră. era caldă
şi cântecelul a stat. se auzea un ţăcănit şi
crengile sălciilor căzând fără zgomot peste crini în apă

tremurai tot
parcă-ţi pierise foamea şi m-am uitat la inimă.
nu curgea sânge.
doar picături mari de ploaie.

acum casa noastră îngheaţă.

la intrare ne atingem

ca atunci când dai peste un animal rănit în întuneric.

amintirile tale vin încet, bâjbâind
şi-mi scapă prea uşor prin piele

înaintez prin frig ca un ars viu fără bandaje

înăuntru stăm

cu creierul spulberat

în faţa unei imense porţi de carne
prin care nu se poate trece oricum

dar numai aşa ne ajungem din urmă
şi apropiem în linişte
marginile acestei răni.

privesc netulburată cum ne creşte părul
de la umeri până la genunchi.

e felul în care noi facem dragoste.

pentru că singura lumină a fost cea de la
capătul ţigării,
am urcat încet, treaptă cu treaptă.

patul se leagănă la trei metri sub
lună

şi-abia aici

am totul în mine sângele

inima dreaptă şi inima stângă
aerul din plămâni cât pentru două
trupuri
şi lumina, trecută prin noi ţesuturi până în spatele sânului drept
de unde va ieşi o singură dată,
spulberându-mi retina.

am totul în mine
două făpturi uşoare
ce numai îmbrăţişate
ating pământul.

dar marginile rănii rămân mereu
proaspete

patul se leagănă la trei metri sub
lună
şi mă trezesc dintr-o dată privind cerul.

eu
sunt păzitoarea.

păzesc o lună aproape rotunjită,

o lumină întunecând altă lumină.

îi vorbesc puţin plângem şi nu mai ştim cine pe cine
adoarme.

când plângem mult îmi creşte o bucată
de lună în locul inimii şi cerul,
negru, se arunca-n gol.

eu sunt păzitoarea.
sângele năvăleşte în inimă
urlând
şi n-o poate topi.
pe gură se preling fierea şi stomacul.
ficatul se sfarmă printre dinţi
ca un dop în gura unei sticle de vin vechi.
aproape nu ştiu când ţipă scurt plămânii
şi se înfig în pământ, trăgând după ei
cei doi rinichi.

cu diafragma spartă, înfăşurată in jurul gurii ca o
cârpă
flutur şi flutur şi
fluturând
scot
pe gură oasele mici.
patru femururi îmi stau în
gât

şi pielea străvezie crapă

ca un înveliş prea întins peste inima asta de elefant
care dă trupul afară
din mine.

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

Love as an Atoll | Lubirea ca un Atol

last night I thought of you for the last time
you were conducting the sea with a brush
and the ocean turned green
and that inception the size of a grain of sand
was filling with nacre
love was born that way:
we navigated hundreds of night-years
on an anchorless ship through the eye of a storm
to the sound of dolphins whistling in pain

no
no more can I bear the burden of love
waves of distrust are striking like hammers
and flooding the shores
today I need an anchor or I’ll drown

~

azi-noapte m-am gândit pentru ultima dată la tine
dirijai marea cu pensula
și oceanul s-a făcut verde
și începutul acela cât un fir de nisip
se umplea de sidef
așa s-a născut dragostea:
am navigat sute de nopți-lumină
pe o corabie fără ancoră în ochiul furtunii
auzind deseori fluieratul de durere al delfinului

nu
nu mai pot îndura iubirea
neîncrederea lovește în rafale
inundă țărmul
azi am nevoie de o ancoră să nu mă înnec

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

2014-02-07 00:21 GMT+02:00

I was old but now I am fine

I speak the truth

the city is buried under snow I talk neither to myself nor to you

the future

as distant as possible consumes me deeply

I have children

so I don’t consider the opportunity offered by

a mental institution

in a moment of fear I found myself heartened

by your voice

some words

I’m not even sure if you ever uttered them or

if I’m just imagining it

I sit in my broken armchair and listen to the laughter coming from the kitchen

announcing the little saturnalia

then the physical exercise

we will receive credits and use them to pay the bills

and rates and buy healthy food our bellies will be full it will be warm

we will fill up the tank and drive around the apartment block always around

the apartment block

over-refined

over-adjusted

potentially immortal.

~

am fost bătrână dar acum sunt bine

spun adevărul

orașul e sub zăpadă nu mai vorbesc singură și nici cu tine

viitorul

cât mai îndepărtat mă preocupă intens

am copii

deci nu iau în calcul șansa pe care ți-o oferă un spital de boli

nervoase

într-un moment de frică m-am surprins încurajându-mă cu vocea

ta

niște vorbe

nici nu mai știu dacă le-ai spus vreodată sau doar

îmi imaginez că le-ai spus

stau în fotoliul meu rupt și ascult râsete din bucătărie

anunțând mica beție alimentară

urmează înviorarea

vom obține credite cu ele vom achita facturi

și rate și alimente sănătoase vom avea burta plină va fi cald

vom pune benzină și vom călători în jurul blocului mereu în jurul

blocului

ultrasofisticați

ultraadaptați

posibil nemuritori.

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

The Sweet Blade of Time | Lama Dulce a Timpului

something in me urges
me to contemplate
the whisper of night into day
like an avatar, the ink migrates from the Vitruvian Man
you watch me the way a child touches a new toy
you take shelter in me from the tornado of moments
that carves wrinkles and desiccates hearts

sometimes you thank me for reviving you
we expose our wounds when the tongues of the clock fork
spitting poisonous nectar
and you push even harder and you walk through me
in an apotheosis of time that has finally taught you
to love me

~

ceva din mine mă împinge să privesc 
cum noaptea geme ușor înspre zi 
cerneala se desprinde de omul vitruvian ca un avatar 
mă privești așa cum un copil atinge o jucărie nouă 
te ascunzi în mine de tornada secundelor
care sapă riduri și usucă inimi 

câteodată îmi mulțumești că te-am resuscitat 
ne dezgolim de răni când limbile ceasului se despică 
clipind a miere cu venin
iar tu intri și mai puternic și mă străbați 
într-o apoteoză a timpului care te-a învățat în sfârșit 
să mă iubești 

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

CHROMA

Posted in CHAPBOOKS | Tagged

Igloo | Iglu

The birds that invade the sky with phosphorescent wings,
they are moments of softness, cracks in plaster-time.
I see their splinters among the spent stars and I ask the planet of a thousand solitudes not to spread her tentacles towards their circle, rainbow caught in the ladder of clouds.

On the stave of death I arranged days of mourning, unchained nights…
the spotted horses of anxiety…
but still you come in and out of my chest, bird
of destiny curled inside a cactus.
My heart expands to the size of a solitude broken
by our existence, by our own creation.

Here, now, glassy life flies among the cobra-birds
biting their tails abandoned in the dusk.
The day will come when youth summons back the birds glued
to the sky and you will no longer be able to steal the flight
of winged souls,
o stainless air, o love that clouds my own igloo!

~

Păsările care invadează cerul cu aripi fosforescente,
ele sunt suave ale clipelor, fisuri într-un timp de ipsos.
Le văd atelele printre stele stinse şi rog planeta celor o mie de singurătăţi
să nu-şi întindă tentaculele spre cercul lor, curcubeu prins de scara norilor.

Am aşezat pe portativul morţii zile îndoliate, nopţi desferecate…
caii neliniştilor pagi…
dar tot îmi ieşi şi îmi intri în piept, pasăre
a destinului cuibărită pe un cactus.
Inima mi se dilată cât o singurătate spartă
de propria noastră zidire, fiinţa.

Acum şi aici zboară, viaţă sticloasă, printre păsări-cobre
ce îşi muşcă coada lăsată peste amurg.
Va veni ziua când tinereţea îşi va chema
păsările lipite pe cer cu adeziv şi nu vei mai putea fura
zborul sufletelor înaripate,
aer inoxidabil, dragoste care abureşti propriul meu iglu!

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

3 Romanian Poets in Translation: Ana Dragu, Angi Melania Cristea and Laura Cozma


Donna Quijote by Viorica Ciucanu


Cartea | The Book by Viorica Ciucanu



Sarutu | The Kiss by Viorica Ciucanu

Posted in CHAPBOOKS | Tagged , , , ,

Bicoloured | Bicolor

I can be quiet with the alabaster syllables
I can rattle the silence
or adorn the lines of destiny
with bicoloured storks

I love the endless column
its cedar scent
but the knife with which I sculpt the clouds
smells white as if cutting slices
from the snow of spotted horses

when will tiny gods
truly start to balance
upon the tragedy of being an angel
for a minute as long as an eel?

I retreat among waves
and scatter storms across the humble sea
where people hear no complaints
only the slow pedalling of lives

~

pot să tac cu silabele de alabastru
pot să zornăi liniștea
sau să împodobesc liniile destinului
cu berze bicolore

iubesc coloana infinitului aroma
ei de cedru
dar cuțitul cu care sculptez norii
miroase alb de parcă aș tăia felii
din zăpada cailor pagi

când vor începe cu adevărat
să se balanseze dumnezei minusculi
peste catastrofa de a fi înger
un minut lung cât un țipar?

mă retrag între valuri
și întind furtuni peste marea simplă
unde oamenii nu pot auzi proteste
doar vieți pedalând

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

Poem with Sea | Poem cu Mare

the sea is spilling young fish onto the shore
your smile is hanging in the horizon like a hairpin
where are the ice banks the hordes of lovers
the seagulls on one leg
when the ship capsizes?

your hands are scattering salt
majestic time is flowing from the green eye of the sea
I am the sand dune
against whom the sea grows restless
star with a coral mane I am
ladder against the firmament of the sky nomadic green lizard

~

marea revarsă pe ţărm peştii tineri
zâmbetul tău se agaţă ca o clamă de orizont
unde sunt banchizele coloniile de îndrăgostiţi
pescăruşii într-un picior
atunci când vaporul se îneacă?

mâinile tale risipesc sare
din ochiul verde al mării curge timpul regal
sunt duna de nisip
din care creşte agitaţia mării
stea cu coamă de aramă sunt
scară pe firmamentul cerului şopârlă verde călătoare

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

The Ruse of the Night | Trucurile Nopţii

tonight sparkling quinces are moaning on the windowsill
through the skin of each star I see perennial shadows
time to harvest the wine grapes
that terrible gift of drinking must from the palms of life
as if I were or were no longer a poet
in a world of pets and ambrosia
in the funicular of death

the evening bell grazes the cathedrals
unafraid of disturbing thistles
the city centre alight with love bears fruit in genuine
trees
heavy buds burst under the feet of the living
chanting an ave maria with their secular body
in exaltation

the grapes of autumn burst against
the great chinese wall
surrounding the aura of the cantaloupe city
its millenary thirst for young poets
the old flagstones fronting deadened statues

death’s bacchic breath strikes the imaginary gates
of my body giving birth among the chestnuts
to hours of gentle words at solstice

~

noaptea asta gem pe pervaz gutuile spumoase
prin carnaţia fiecarei stele zăresc umbrele perpetue
ora de cules viile
harul acela teribil de a bea must din palmele vieţii
ca şi cum ai fi sau nu ai mai fi poet
peste o lume de pet-uri şi de ambrozie
în funicularul morţii

clopotul înserării paşte printre catedrale şi
nu se sfieşte să răscolească ciulini
centrul luminat de dragoste rodeşte în pomi
adevăraţi
mugurii plini pocnesc sub paşii celor vii
care rostesc cu trupul lor laic un ave maria
pe voci înalte

strugurii toamnelor plesnesc stropind
marele zid chinezesc
ce înconjoară aura oraşului-cantalup
setea lui milenară de tineri poeţi
vechile pavele din faţa statuilor amorţite

suflul bahic al morţii izbeşte porţile imaginare
ale trupului meu ce naşte printre castane
ore de alintat vorbele la solstiţiu

Posted in ROMANIAN | Tagged

A Discussion on Verity Spott with 6 Poems

I suppose what we’ve been trying to do so far is establish a language space that deliberately alienates anyone and anything that enforces the gender binary. Pretty simple. Really easy actually; pinpoint every harmonic lie on the map and structurally dismember them.
Verity Spott, Trans* Manifestos

During the course in which ‘I’ become, I give birth to myself amid the violence of a convulsion that, to be sure, is inscribed in a symbolic system, but in which, without either wanting or being able to become integrated in order to answer to it, it reacts, it abreacts. It abjects.
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection

Verity Spott: From a Reverie
Verity Spott: Sonnet
Verity Spott: ‘So in your silent still small throat …’
Verity Spott: Sonnet
Verity Spott: Sonnet
Verity Spott: Sonnet

The longest poem printed here, ‘From a Reverie’, starts almost like an incantation with these swung lines: ‘In single minute gulps like propranolol the night sways, steadies / to a short halt. And the neck stops. Stops wide open to the space it now / appears to be in …’ So much has already happened here. The softness of the lines, the suggestion of being ‘wide open’ to something, invites us to gently sink into the narrative of the poem as it begins. But this effect is deceptive. Almost imperceptibly, the material neck, the actual body, which stops and is wide open, conjures the image of a corpse.

In Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Julia Kristeva writes that

the corpse… is death infecting life. Abject. It is something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object. Imaginary uncanniness and real threat, it beckons us and ends up engulfing us.

The daydream, the ‘reverie’, has a structural position analogous to the abject in the figure of the corpse. The daydream drags into waking life that which the subject ordinarily consigns to night, to the cinema of sleep, in order to constitute itself, to function. This negative relation does not hold true for the abject. Rather its consciousness (or the consciousness of it) integrates the threat to the subject into its expression, is almost made of such threat, such pain. It is in part then the abject that speaks through the pronoun ‘it’, which in this poem can suddenly ‘explain how on earth it might actually / feel at least some of the time now in its sleep or when she or they are / awake but mostly then its kept in silence’.

It too is open in its consciousness. It thinks its experience in different hostile environments which mostly keep it from expression – the wedding, sex, work, memory – and is thereby dragged through an opening into a memory in which it tries to articulate itself and its thoughts on monogamy, but the body that listens to it ‘doesn’t allow himself / the pains, they well up in his body.’ In this writing, things coexist. We can no more separate the present from the past than the body from its environments, its (subject’s) tortures and agonies. It is not that there is an equivocation or erasure of antagonistic forces, such that experience and world become matte and featureless, but rather that everything is revealed to be intricately riven with strata, including the stratum of total contradiction. For every thing, even the most objectionable and abject, contains the possibility of being otherwise; every fact is a promise of its revocation.

This fundamental antagonism does strange things to the language of poetry and its means. One of the crispest, most striking images in ‘From a Reverie’ comes when ‘it’ grabs a shower nozzle, with a disc with ‘holes / in like the holes in the back of a birthing toad’, behind which ‘a perfectly formed / ready salted Pringle’ is concealed. This image of the Suriname toad – the young of which hatch fully formed from eggs which have become implanted in the skin on the back of the mother – seems to upend the traditional relationship of image and comparison. It is not the toad’s perforated back which is perceived as reminiscent here of a shower head, but the other way around – as if any everyday object could always be equated to the most obscure and bizarre referent. No object and image at two ends of a hierarchy, but the weird place where both of these things cohabit, and where we too can live, in the poem. ‘It feels disgusting’, but the disgust in the poem bears no value judgement. Actually this image of the toad and the shower nozzle and the Pringle is a moment of tenderness and respite. The toad-pringle like a precious diamond. A place where ‘it’ can speak back to its pain.

This site seems to correspond to a position that Spott takes in relation to the classic trans* narrative of transition, resisting any clean progression from here to there. In Trans* Manifestos, Spott problematises the narratives imposed upon the trans* community, the escape ‘toward the great white sun’. Spott proposes instead ‘staying still there’, ‘occupying the space of social discomfort for THEM and not US’. Here the trans* subject is not in a state of ‘transition’ which corresponds to a cis-normative understanding of binary gender, but of resistant occupation. From that space, Spott pokes language through ‘its’ pores, releasing all its minute toads. The way the pronouns switch and move like those optical grid illusions where the dots between the squares disappear when you try to focus on them directly. In our translation, the German language can be observed squirming as it tries to resist its gendered structure. We can make es act as a pronoun (though it always sounds a little Freudian), distinguish itself from ich or er, but when it/es becomes possessive, it goes back to being his (sein). And even the inanimate objects are constantly throwing their genders in your face …

Posted in CHAPBOOKS | Tagged , ,

Sonnet

Now skim the shock of sky that split without
us, sinking through the plaiting of the reids:
You slept, and whispered all your silence out,
the shoreline sang out threats in choking heaves.
The houses, polder fizzing in the ear.
What’s that? It snaps your cheek; a little rain?
Behind a shock of teaming buddleia
the face that switched my heart back on again.
The choice, to wince or lean into the gale
disclosing faces traumatised by rote
our unclaimed lives that rocked and broke in trails
the subtlest loss at edge of eye, remote:
To build an oath or crush this tiny snare
make rendezvous in all our hearts, laid bare.

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Sonnet

She creaked beneath the weight that taught His skin;
His tense electric ghost to be put out
amongst the ropes and ladders of His doubt;
He’d shake to let his body climb back in.
They pushed her organs into disbelief
that nouns should grind and populate her life.
And with the dream of sanity’s respite
pronounced the lockup – rendered her to grief.
Reanimated all His emptied flesh
to crush away her testifying voice
and break from life confessions of His choice.
gave all His rigid promises afresh:
The icon’s truth of He and her made love,
intolerance, its pronouns from above …

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Sonnet

for Dolly

Coming home to all of most alarm, there
across the shaving edge, & back stuck in,
be shored &
built back, snared
to granted joy or tensile pins.
If you are there,
oh there again is us,
colliding harms unite till bodies sing,
closely taut and still. Just as their stationary mind
comes back so left among unfelt alight.
Filled my voice to courage –
newly hammered fractal
pheadsfgia to surface,
to running up the front
hungrily. Just play this intricate drumming
the cat-wound flat of the string
banging on the paws …

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‘So in your silent still small throat …’

[1]So in your silent still small throat my broken voice may sing. I’d say a mile off the shore is the wind farm. One hundred and sixty eight windmills. I wonder what their sound will be. As they were being hammered into the seabed the pile drivers sent their echoes to the surface of the water. I stood there by the pebbles at the edge of the water on a very cold and still night. The sound was barely audible yet so completely full. It seemed that the sound was coming up from the smooth flat surface of the water – that the smooth flat water was somehow projecting the sound into the still night air. I fell forward in my bed with a gasp and my eyes shot open. By the edge of the tidal flow I watched. We watched as the water found its passages towards the sea. We watched it come back. We were stranded and we were also drowning and we were also breathing and we were also silent. We were also speaking. We were speaking as the water was projecting itself into sound, into the air, into space, into our minds. We were also no longer alive and we were also completely full of life. In fact you and I, we told ourselves, were the life and soul of the party. And so we stepped from room to room, our vast economies, our limitless data. Conversations. Stepping back and forth against the tide. A colossal warning on the beach. People must not come onto the beach from the sea whilst they are alive, unless sanctioned they must first be dead people. We do not speak ill of the dead, or of newborns. It is everyone in the middle we detest. The young know nothing. The middle aged are themselves. The old are stupid and angry. The dead are perfect. We do not speak ill of a tide once receded. The stones and jetsam it leaves behind it. They are its clothes. The discarded. Speaking like “a dotard”. Fire and fury. The sound that rose from the water was so terrifying. You told me that it was the piledriver. Similarly when the tide has totally receded the wreck of the SS Vina comes into view. Its mast pokes through the waves at a high tide. It was left at the outflow, primed to explode, you told me.

The Fleet arrived at Invergordon on Friday, the 13th, and shore leave was given that night. There was some disturbance in the Canteen and several men addressed the other men present on the subject of the reductions in Naval Pay. On Monday, the 14th, the WARSPITE and the MALAYA proceeded to sea to carry out Exercises. On Monday night further meetings and disturbances took place in the Canteen and the men present agreed that the Fleet should not be allowed to go to sea the next day. On Tuesday morning [in some ships] the men fell in when ordered and carried out the normal work of the day and prepared for sea, but in other ships the men refused to fall in.1 Fall in too be as a lost face my tiny voice to sing. Still, small, gut there’ll uh. Assailed laughter slipped across the salt. “We had some drinks, we danced, we kissed, that’s all.” [3]. Arrested on 9 January 1954, in March of that year Pitt-Rivers was brought before the British courts charged with “conspiracy to incite certain male persons to commit serious offences with male persons” or “buggery”. It was the first time this charge had been used in a British court since the trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895 and it led to public criticism that the police were pursuing a McCarthy-like purge of Society homosexuals. [2] The father of participant Jeff Tefft felt he needed to post a letter in a local newspaper disavowing his son. Pearce Tefft says that although he and his family are not racists, once his son’s face and name were posted on social media they became the targets of people upset with his son.3 The distance is non-metrical. The movements beneath your feet. The inclination of the voice to turn back, to give in. The speculation of credibility. The meanings in the bitten tail. The hazardous examples. The set in stone, in stomach. The fact of victim. The fact of aggressor. The proximity of love. The traction of disrepair. The normality of sustain.

The pang of forced closure. The pressure to be. The iconic nature of being alive. The games, e.g. Golf. The analysis of the subject. The descriptions of illness. The testimonial. The cement of disdain. The barrel, the captain, the boson, the peninsula. Being afraid. Being tested. The elegance of the shrapnel. The hyper intelligence of quantified freedoms. Speaking. The endless glib section of the auditorium or of the galley or of the lips smacking together in. Or of the eyelids smacking back and forth, closing with a colossal loudness in the dark. The intrepid pioneer for example. The Royal Air Force used it for target practice leading up to the invasion of Normandy, and in 1944 a gale carried the SS Vina to a sandbar where the hole-covered boat took on water and stayed. [4] The company’s staying power, to give but one example. We gathered at the top of the field and walked. We were unquestioning of our complexion. The skin, for example. What it has given us. Speaking of that us. How uncomfortable you are now. What pain! The plaiting water snaking out through the marsh and the birds that narrowly asses the ground for their landings. The twist of a kind in the stomach. The change in public opinion from pre-op to post-op, to the dead, to in gradients at a fast incline a living face. The violence always in inaction. The wreck loaded with explosives. Things like that.

1† Extracts from a letter to Sir Clive Wigram, Private Secretary to the King from Sir George Chetwode, the Naval Secretary, 16th September 1931 (ADM 178/129)
2† NON
3† NPR
4† NON

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